Dr. Chandrasekhar gets appointed as Director of CSIR-IICT by PM Narendra Modi

Dr. Srivari Chandrasekhar was appointed as the director of Hyderabad-based CSIR-Institue of Chemical Technology (IICT), on Tuesday. Dr. Chandrasekhar who has been on the post of Chief Scientists since 2014 felt honoured after the announcement. The appointment came from the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is president of the CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research).

Born in Hyderabad, Dr. Chandrasekhar completed his studies in the same city, B.Sc. (1982), M.Sc. (1985). Later he joined IICT in 1986 as Junior Research Fellow for his Ph.D and successfully completed it in 1991. Back in 2010, he was appointed as the chief scientists at CSIR-IICT. Since then he became the major force in industrial research and led a large group of scientists and natural products chemistry.

He has made significant contributions in the field of organic chemistry, synthesis of active natural products and pharmaceutical products. For his contributions, Dr. Chandrasekhar was also awarded the Infosys Prize (a personal purse of Rs 55 lakh, 22 carat gold medal and a citation) in 2014 in Physical Sciences. President Pranab Mukherjee rewarded him with great honour on 5 January 2015. Dr. Chandrasekhar is also the first synthetic chemist to be honoured with the Infosys science award.

The honoured scientist has more than 250 publications under his name along with 5,000 citations. He is also the fellow of all the three science academies of the country including National Academy of Sciences, Indian Academy of Sciences and Indian National Science Academy.

Moreover, he has developed PEG (polyethylene glycol) which has many applications from industrial manufacturing to medicines. He also invented technologies for anti-depressive compound, sertraline, Asenapine, anti-tuberculosis drug, etc.